User blog:The Flaming Sword of Fury/My Favorite Thing Ever!
HEYYYYYY! This is the beginning of a new series, in which I.........review shit! Why is this in blog form you may ask? Because I can! Anyway...... Growing up, I didn't really have alot of games to choose from. The games from my childhood I mostly remember are Pokemon, Animal Crossing and Mario. But even then, we had mostly Mario Party and Super Mario 64.....So that's why, as a 15 year old I decided to expand my horizons and try new games! When I was younger, I was a huge Pokemon nerd, I knew all of the Pokemon's names and I can't tell you how many times I kept replaying Pokemon Diamond and Pearl over and over again...seriously. Basically, Pokemon got me into two things, 1. RPGS and 2. Shoving cute little monsters into tiny little balls....not those kind you sicko. Anyway, as I got older, I strayed away from Pokemon and started playing other rpgs..such as Golden Sun, which got boring after a while and the Mother franchise, which wasn't really as great as Chuggaaconroy said it was, I mean it was decent, but not my favorite. Enough about abysmal RPGS though, let me get to my main topic of interest, my favorite game. Around 2014 or so, I started getting into a certain franchise of games, known as Final Fantasy. Final Fantasy is one of the best series I've ever played, well, ok I love every installment except for 2, 8, and 13. Anyway, my favorite of all of those has to be one FINAL FANTASY IX! Out of all the PSX FFs it is my personal favorite, and holds a special spot in my heart in which no other form of media can replace. But, saying how awesome it is won't work, nope! I'm going to give you every reason I fucking love the shit out of this game...and, why it holds the spot in my heart it does..... In Final Fantasy IX, you play as a rogue thief, Zidane Tribal, who is a part of a group of thieves called Tantalus, who is going to the Kingdom of Alexandria to go and kidnap the princess, in disguise, they will pretend to be performing a play called, "I Want To Be Your Canary". Meanwhile, a young mage named Vivi sneaks into the play with a rat boy, named Puck. As it turns out, Garnet wants to be kidnapped, much to the chagrin of Steiner the knight, and goes with Zidane and his group willingly. As they make their escape from Alexandria, they get bombed by the queen and end up landing in a nearby forest. Zidane's goal is to find the princess alive, and get to the city of Lindblum. Does he succeed? Well, you'll just have to play the game to find out. The game is your typical Final Fantasy game, like the other PS FFs it uses a battle system known as ATB, or Active Time Battle, a tiny bar slowly fills up, and when the bar is filled, that is when you can have a character perform an action. Once the action has been performed, the bar is emptied and you have to let the bar fill back up again before you can have that character perform an action again. It can be slow and annoying at times, but thankfully, the AI has enough grace to not make more than one move per turn. Another battle mechanic, that is exclusive to this game, Trance, everytime a character is attacked by an enemy, a pink bar fills up slowly and once they have been attacked enough times, this initiates the Trance Mode. Trance is kind of an odd mechanic, not only does it affect your characters in abilities, and appearence, but also when the battle is over the Trance bar empties again. It can be frustrating at times when a character initiates Trance when the battle is nearly over. Weapons and Armor are also very important in this game, if you buy a weapon or a set of armor, do NOT throw it away. The reason for this, is because every weapon and piece of armor in this game, have abilities that characters can learn. To fully master these abilities, you have to fight, a lot! After the ability, or abilities are fully mastered, you can hand down the weapon or armor to another character who needs to learn those same abilities. The graphics are nice for a late PSX game. Despite most of the characters looking cartoony compared to the other PSX titles, they never look cartoony enough that they look unrealistic, the land you traverse through also looks very good. In one part, you're traversing through an ancient city, and the music not only fits the atmosphere but the appearence of the city also fits that of one as well. In another part of the game, you're traversing through an entirely different world.......full of monkey people. This new world is basically scenery porn, every place you go to in this new world, is layed out in such a way, that your jaw will be dropping to the floor. But, onto the main part, the characters. The characters in this game are some of the oddest, yet most relatable bunch of characters I've seen so far in my gaming career. First let's start off with our main protagonist Zidane Tribal. Zidane is an interesting character to say the least...he's got a monkey tail, which the reason why he has that tail is an important plot point in the game. Zidane is a thief, but there's more to him than just that, he's kind, sweet, loyal, perverted, and he has that rare stroke of wiseness occassionally. Despite this, he's given a lot of depth and it's just plain hillarious to hear his reaction to the things that are going on sometimes. For example, when you fight off Beatrix who is way more competent than Steiner, instead of making a response like, "You're going down!" or something boring and cliched like that, he instead goes for something kind of like, What the hell!? The only villains here are you and your fat Queen!" What makes Zidane unique from protagonists in other video games, isn't the fact that he's not some angsty jackass like most protagonists seem to be these days, but that he goes through some development alongside the rest of the characters. Zidane matures as the game progresses, but one thing never changes about this guy once during the entire game. His stubbornness, even when he's going through a Heroic BSOD, that one trait doesn't disappear. Despite his faults, Zidane is a forgiving person, seen when he decides to go back and rescue the antagonist from a thorny death, despite said antagonist trying to kill his friends at several points during the game. He is a really loyal follower of the belief, "You don't need a reason to help people." Garnet is an example of a rebellious princess, she suspects something is wrong with her mother, Queen Ugly As Fu- I mean Queen Brahne, so she sneaks aboard the Tantalus ship to go to Lindblum so she can go talk to the local regent about it. Unfortunately, it doesn't run as smoothly as Garnet had planned and she ends up nearly killed by her own mother at one point. Eventually, it's revealed that Garnet isn't even a real princess, and the real Garnet died years ago as an infant and she just happened to look exactly like her, so the royal family took her in. Garnet is for the most part, pretty normal, she's kind, sweet, and can kick some ass. I mean, you see this cute little girl and suddenly she summons Odin on your ass, you would probably be like, "Whoa! I wouldn't want to mess with her!" And that is exactly why Garnet in my opinion, is bae. Although, to be honest, she does look alot like Tifa and Rinoa...jfc Square, why must you have made all of your PSX FF heroines look similar? I don't know the answer to that, but what I do know is, is that Garnet has one of the most fucking hilarious nicknames in existence, "Dagger". In context, it's a lot funnier than it sounds....reaaalllly funny. Next up is Vivi! Out of all the members of this crazy cast I find that Vivi is the one that goes through the most character development. Basically Vivi starts off as this innocent kid, but as he traverses through the lands of Gaia, we find out that Vivi is only a prototype of a man made race, known as the Black Mages. And like all prototypes, Vivi is different, for one thing he's shorter, and looks like he's 9 years old. When Vivi goes to a village whose inhabitants are his own kind, he figures out that all Black Mages have a short lifespan and will die eventually, due to Vivi being a prototype however, it is possible that he might live a little bit longer than the rest of his kind. Vivi learns to face death with dignity though, and it's even implied in the ending of the game that he might've died actually. Vivi is one of those characters, who you will find yourself curling up in a fetal position and crying over, he's so damn adorable! I mean, just look at him! Doesn't that just make you wanna pick up and hug him? Then, there's my least favorite character in this game, Steiner. Oh boy, do I detest Steiner. Steiner's development is a bit rushed and as cute as his love plot with Beatrix is, it comes out of nowhere, as there is no sign of chemistry between the two knights before this point, heck they don't even show interest in eachother before it happens. What's the point of having a love plot, if none of the characters involved in it have anything hinting at interest in eachother? Steiner in himself was really whiny and obnoxious, and to be honest it gets old having to listen to him after the first disc.. Freya comes next and dear lord is this gonna be a ride. Freya is a knight searching for her lost love, Fratley, she leaves home for five years to search for him and there is no sign of him anywhere. In search, she meets Zidane and joins up with him after she hears news of Alexandria warring on her home, Burmecia. Unfortunately for her, her home is destroyed and she promises to protect one of Burmecia's neighbors, Cleyra. And because life is a douche to Freya, not only does that place get destroyed by Black Mages, but she also finds an amnesiac Fratley. Unfortunately for the knight, we don't see much of her after Disc 2, which is a shame seeing as she is a well written character. Next is Quina, who is really just a random joke character who's there for the fun of it..he/she likes frogs, and if you go to every Qu's Marsh in the world, and catch 99 frogs, you can face off against his master, Quale. This is a neat enough mechanic, and kind've gives some development to a character who really....doesn't have much of their own. As I said though, Quina is more comic relief than an actual character, but they still serve a purpose......somewhat. Second to last, is Eiko, who's obsession with Zidane would make more sense if she was like, 10 years older. Despite this, once Eiko finds out that Zidane loves Garnet, she tries everything she can to help those two get together. And she's a summoner too, like Garnet, that's badass. Having 2 summoners? HELL YES! Only thing is though, Garnet and Eiko are basically similar classes, it's up to you whether or not you choose to use Eiko or Garnet. Finally there's Amarant, who's given about as much development as well, he's not given much to say the least. We meet him at the end of the 2nd disc, and we really don't learn much else about him. Really, it feels the developers kind've got lazy near the end of development and decided to fit this guy in. To be honest he's not a bad character, he's just reaaaallllly underdeveloped. Another thing I'd have to give this game credit for, is it's soundtrack. Really, I could go on and on about this all day, my favorite piece out of all of them, would have to be this one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tog9GjczJVE It's one of the more moving tracks in the game, and it plays in a part near the end of the game where a character (no spoilers) goes through a depression scene and, pretty much...the character who this song centers around will shock you! And as for who it is...well, I'm not a spoiler alert, so go play the game yourself.... Anyway, this is the best game I've ever played. It's got a great story, endearing characters, wonderful graphics, and the music is stellar! So, yes, I would recommend this game to anyone, now go play it! Seriously, you won't regret it! Category:Blog posts